A lecture by Victoria Claflin Woodhull ...: The review of a century; or, the fruit of five thousand yearsWoodhull, Victoria C. (Victoria Claflin)
History
A lecture by Victoria Claflin Woodhull ...: The review of a century; or, the fruit of five thousand years
Woodhull, Victoria C. (Victoria Claflin)
United States -- Economic conditions -- 1865-1918; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
If the evils of industry were removed a great many social ills would
cease. For instance, if women were independent, industrial members of
the community, they would never be forced into distasteful, ill-assorted
or convenient marriages, which are the most fruitful of all the sources
of vice and crime in children, and consequently in the community. But
beyond the industrial and dependent relations of the sexes there are
many purely social ills that as much as those of industry require a
remedy. Marriage is regarded as a too frivolous matter; is rushed into
and out of in a haste that shows utter ignorance or else a total
disregard for its responsibilities, and as if it were an institution
specially designed for the benefit of the selfish wishes and passions of
the sexes. But to look at marriage in this light is to not see it at all
in that of the public good, or ultimately, in that of individual
happiness. Marriages that are based upon selfishness or passion can
never result in anything save misery to all concerned. Men and women who
cannot look above these interests, who do not recognize that these
interests should be secondary; who, after finding that their personal
feelings would lead them to marry, cannot coolly ask themselves, are we
prepared to become God’s architects to create His images, and be
governed by the truthful reply, are not fit to marry. Many have the idea
that I am opposed to marriage, but nothing could be further from the
truth. I am opposed to improper marriages only; to marriages that bring
unhappiness to the married, and misery to their fruits; and such as do
this, had I the power, I would prohibit. I would guard the door by which
this state is entered with all the vigilance with which the young mother
watches her first-born darling babe; I would have no one enter its
precincts save on bended knee and with prayerful heart, as if
approaching the throne of God; as if to enter there were to more than in
any other way to give one’s self to the service of God. So strictly
would I guard it that none who should once enter could ever wish to
retrace their steps. I would make divorces an unknown thing by
abolishing imprudent and ill-assorted marriages. I would make the stigma
so great that woman should find it impossible to confront the world in a
marriage for a home, for position, or for any reason save love alone;
and I would have her who should sell her person to be degraded in
marriage, as culpable, as guilty, as impure at heart, as she is held to
be who sells it otherwise. I would put every influence of the community
against impure relations and selfish purposes, in whatever form they
might exist, and encourage honour, purity, virtue and chastity. I would
take away from marriage the idea that it legally conveys the control of
the person of the wife to the husband, and I would make her as much its
guardian against improper use as she is supposed to be in maidenhood. It
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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